THE LIES WE FEED STRANGERS
by la letra escarlata
Summary: A schoolteacher meets a fascinating woman who tells her about her life.


_**THE LIES WE FEED STRANGERS**_

~~~ By La Letra Escarlata ~~~

The schoolmistress perusing her somewhat dog-eared copy of _Jane Eyre _by Charlotte Brontë looked up from her reading when al elegantly dressed middle-aged woman of raven hair only slightly touched by few gray hairs, entered the train compartment in the Charleston station.

'Good morning,' the woman greeted her as she put off her visibly expensive fur coat and the porter accommodated her vast luggage on top of the upper shelves.

'Good morning,' the younger woman replied.

'What a warm morning,' the other woman said.

'Certainly it is. Especially for this time of the year.'

'Are you from Charleston?'

'Oh, no, I am from Richmond and I was just visiting.'

'Has it been a long visit?, the old lady inquired.

'Oh, not really, just a couple of days.'

'Have you been visiting some friends there, perhaps?', she inquired again.

The schoolmistress eventually left aside her book, accurately sensing that her reading was over by her chatty traveling companion.

'Actually, I am the teacher in a new school that has recently opened in a small town fifty-seven miles away from Richmond but my family is from Charleston and I've just attended my youngest sister's wedding.'

'Oh, a teacher,' the other woman said, with as little enthusiasm and as much indifference as if she said a scrubbing maid. That explained the book she had been so enthralled in. 'But I guess that congratulations are then in order.'

The younger woman bit her lip, torn between the urge to speak on and the loyalty she felt she owed her sister. Finally, the strong dislike she felt for the man who had already become her brother-in-law won her over.

'I'm afraid we're not too keen on the man of her choice,' she confided, lowering her voice.

'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. An ill-suited couple, perhaps?'

'It's not exactly that, Mrs… Mrs…,' she stumbled.

'Oh, I don't think I introduced myself. But where are my manners these days? I am growing absent-minded, I think. Mrs. Scarlett Butler,' she finally introduced herself.

'Cathy Simmons. Well, Mrs. Butler, it's that we think she's rushing into a new marriage which might not be too convenient for her. After all, she has only been widowed a year and a half.'

'I see.'

'Her late husband certainly was not an easy man and their relationship was from the beginning troubled. And now this new marriage… We would hate to see the same thing happening to her again.'

'Probably she's already considered all of this. Is her second husband very much alike in character to her first one?'

'Oh, no, they're complete opposites.'

'Then she should be safe from repeating the past experience. I was also a widow when I married my husband and it was completely different.'

'You were a widow too? And your second marriage was a happy one?'

'Certainly,' Scarlett said, not making any effort to let her travel companion know that Rhett had not been her second husband but her third. After all, except for Wade, she could hardly remember her brief marriage to Charles Hamilton and she was not really sure that being married for a few weeks really counted any more

. 'We've been happily married for over thirty years now.'

'You see, my sister's first husband was a hot-tempered man and they were constantly fighting and making up.'

Scarlett laughed a hearty laugh.

'Dear me! That's been the case with my Rhett and I during these thirty years and counting…'

'Do you fight a lot?'

'That we certainly do.'

'My sister and her husband couldn't live together but they didn't seem to be able to be apart for longer than a couple of days either. At one time, my father decided that it would be better for all the parties involved to maneuver a quiet separation and he removed my sister to my brother's house in Philadelphia, but it turned out to no avail because she wrote to him a letter begging him to go for her and in less than three weeks' times she was back home, arguing with him and making up as if nothing had ever happened. My father has never forgiven her for that.'

'A sorry affair, indeed.'

'But then you say that your marriage is happy enough even despite the many arguments.'

'Yes, it is. I couldn't love my husband more and, then, you see, we were estranged for two years once.'

'Oh, really?'

'Yes. It was many years ago, after our youngest daughter died and we drifted apart.'

'How terrible. I am so sorry to hear that.'

'That was about twenty-five years ago, so I've learned to live with my losses.'

'So, what happened, if I may ask?', she asked, surprised by her very boldness in addressing a perfect stranger in such a straightforward manner.

'I saw my husband three or four times during those two years we were apart and then we decided to get together again.'

'Do you have any more children?'

'We have two older children, Wade Hampton, who is a lawyer in Connecticut now and Ella, who is married to an Atlanta businessman and has three children.'

'that's lovely.'

'I wish my son lived closer to me, though. I see Ella's children daily but my Wade has five sons whom I only see for Christmas. But you have to let your children live their own lives.'

'Of course.'

'Does your sister have any children?'

'Fortunately, no. It would have been too much dragging children into their marriage, to bear witness into their parents' fights. Your own experience to the contrary, I think nobody, not even my own sister, would be able to claim theirs as a happy relationship at all.'

'Maybe it was all for the better.'

'Yes, it probably was, but do you know what?,' the other woman went on.

A few hours later, as Scarlett got into bed in her cold and dark Atlanta house, she thought about the lovely conversation she had had with that nice young woman. She hoped she had brought her a little hope about her sister's second marriage, even if not everything Scarlett had told her had been true.

How to tell a complete stranger that three days ago, when she had seen Rhett's body lying down in his coffin had been the first time she had laid eyes on him in close to twenty-eight years? Yes, he had come a few times in the two years following his departure but, since then, enraged that she had once more refused his offer of a quiet divorce, he had never set foot in Atlanta again. He had continued sending her money through his lawyers for upkeep of the house as well as for her personal expenses but not as much as a postcard had she ever received from him. It was only when his sister had telegraphed her to inform her that Rhett had died the night before that Scarlett had learned that he had been living in Charleston. She had attended the funeral more out of duty than because of genuine feeling towards the man she had married so long ago that sometimes it seemed a dream rather than something that had really happened to her.

How to tell a complete stranger that Wade had left at eighteen to go to university in the North and had barely kept in touch ever since? He had visited once every four or five years and although at first he had welcomed Scarlett at his home, soon enough he let her know that her prolonged, biannual visits were not warmly expected or tolerated. As a result, it had been seven years since Scarlett had last gone to visit them in their Hartford home and hadn't even met Wade's youngest, whom she was not even sure if it was a boy or a girl.

How to tell a total stranger that your only daughter had all but accepted the first marriage proposal she had received just to run away from her mother? Scarlett and Ella had never been particularly close and by the time Ella got married it was clear to both mother and daughter that theirs would always be a cordial yet impersonal relationship, at best. Conversations between the two women were still quite strained, the only safe ground they found being Ella's children, and Scarlett was not too interested in being a grandmother, to begin with, not bothering to visit them unless she had nothing else to do, as it rarely happened, for she had a wide circle of friends as well as a string of male companions, mostly widowers, who took her out from time to time and who, she hoped, didn't have any intention to pursue her more insistently now that they had probably learned that she was newly widowed. She had no intention of ever getting married – three times were more than enough for any woman.

But how to tell a virtual stranger all of this? No, some things were best left unspoken and when silence would not do, lies came in very handy.

_**THE END**_


End file.
